Getting rid of Search Marquis.

[bluecheer]

I need help to get rid of Search Marquuis on my Macbook Pro 2011. No idea how this happened as my partner has been using it.
Save all the jokes till I get it fix.

 

[Slydude]

Try installing DetectX Swift and running that. If that does not work try following these directions.

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I need help to get rid of Search Marquuis on my Macbook Pro 2011. No idea how this happened as my partner has been using it.

You got it by downloading software from an untrustable source. Possibly a bundle deal or a downloading site.

This is a new class of adware. It appears only to do mildly annoying stuff, but what they really want you to do is to Google "uninstall Search Marquis" and you will find several new Web sites that purport to be sites to help you uninstall Search Marquis, but they actually aren't that helpful. As a final resort these sites suggest that you download software to get rid of Search Marquis, and it's THAT software that you have to be incredibly afraid of.

Hopefully you can get rid of Seach Marquis using these instructions:

Remove SearchMarquis.com from Mac (Virus Removal Guide)

This guide teaches you how to remove SearchMarquis.com redirect for free by following easy step-by-step instructions.

malwaretips.com

 

[bluecheer]

Thank you for both of your ideas and will get back with what results I get. Hopefully good ones.

 

[nickyr]

old thread I know but a warning to others:

I discovered this marquis beauty on my Mac Mini earlier today. No idea how it got there as the only app I'd recently downloaded was rather ironically Malwarebytes (and yes, from their official site). I rarely go online with my MM and have never opened a "dodgy" website or email link. It's a complete mystery.

Anyway, after following all the steps in the excellent guide above, the only option left for me was to wipe the HD and reinstall the OS and all the apps I use (Creative Cloud, Canon Drivers. etc - nothing remotely dodgy).

All seems fine now but I'm still at a complete miss as to how it got onto my MM.

 

[IWT]

Interesting that the Link post in #3 by Randy uses Malwarebytes as part of the removal process - and you say that the only app you've recently downloaded was Malwarebytes.

Could be coincidental, I guess. There could well be other ways for Marquis to get into your Mac, I suppose.

And thank you for your post!

Ian

 

[nickyr]

hopefully a coincidence Ian. And I've genuinely no idea. My MM serves as a pseudo server for all my image and video files. It's not used for email and very rarely do I use it to go online, and only then for trusted sites. I first noticed it while using YouTube but I can't see that site as posing a security risk???

 

[Randy B. Singer]

All seems fine now but I'm still at a complete miss as to how it got onto my MM.

There is no self-propagating/self-disseminating malware for the Macintosh in the wild. That means that what you got was a Trojan Horse (malware that can't self-reproduce which is propagated by fooling you into downloading it). It had to be downloaded volitionally somehow.

The two most common ways for that to happen are for you to download something that purports to be something else (e.g. Adobe Flash, or a video codec) or for you to download something legitimate which comes bundled with the Trojan Horse. The most common way for the latter to happen is to download legitimate software from a software download site such as MacUpdate and the software's installer includes the Trojan Horse.

For what it's worth, I don't trust MalwareBytes, as their advertising has been dishonest and the program itself is suspiciously large and invasive. I've been imploring users to use the very similar DetectX Swift (free) instead:
https://sqwarq.com/detectx/

 

[nickyr]

thanks Randy
seeing as the only thing I downloaded was MWB (and from their official site) then that must have somehow opened a back door for the Trojan.
I will certainly look into detectx (ETA - downloaded and installed and MWB deleted)

I always thought MWB were one of the good guys. I know they were bought out a while back and perhaps things changed then :-(

 

[Randy B. Singer]

I always thought MWB were one of the good guys. I know they were bought out a while back and perhaps things changed then :-(

The product originated as AdwareMedic, a free product from Thomas Reed that was only really designed to look for Adware. It was a very useful product, and Thomas Reed is a superhero for creating it and giving it away for free.

The MalwareBytes folks bought the rights to AdwareMedic (and hired Thomas Reed), and used it as the basis for a free Macintosh version of MalwareBytes. They advertised it as a comprehensive anti-virus product, but suspiciously it only took a minute or two to do a scan. Way too fast for it to be doing a comprehensive scan for all malware. A lot of back and forth revealed that it looks for some malware beyond the adware that AdwareMedic looked for, but that it doesn't look inside any software at all, it only looks for specific file names in specific places on your Mac. You can't look for a lot of malware that way. So the company isn't being entirely honest.

However, MalwareBytes changed drastically at some point. The free version of MalwareBytes became a trial version for a new commercial version of MalwareBytes. They included persistent adware for the commercial version of MalwareBytes in the free trial version, and the product got big and it started installing a surprising number of files very deeply within your Mac's system. (I was shocked when I went to delete MalwareBytes from my Mac and EasyFind discovered that there were 21 different files deep in my system that MalwareBytes had installed.) What all those flles are doing, I can't tell you, but I find it hard to believe that they are doing anything good.

Since DetectX Swift is substantially similar, and it's entirely free, it makes sense to me that users might prefer to use it instead of MalwareBytes. It, too, isn't a comprehensive anti-virus utility, but it does an excellent job with adware, so it's valuable to have as both Apple and the traditional anti-virus utilities don't do a comprehensive job of dealing with adware.

 

[nickyr]

thanks Randy - that history is really interesting.
I recall the days when AdwareMedic along with Onyx were the goto Mac tools. I guess commercialism takes over though and the good people get absorbed.